


Reward System

by Severina



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: Community: sexy_right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 18:18:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Knowing it’s up to you doesn’t work.  Motivational speeches sure as fuck don’t work.  What you need,” John says, “is a reward system.”</p>
<p>The sound of his zipper being slowly pulled down suddenly seems very, very loud in the silence of the room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reward System

**Author's Note:**

> Written for LJ's sexy_right community, for the prompt "the kneecap"
> 
> * * *

Matt’s heard it from everyone: from the doctor at the hospital, from his physiotherapist, from John. If he wants to regain full mobility in his leg, he has to do the exercises. 

The doctor is flat-faced, with round Lennon specs and a permanently dour expression. He looks blankly at the wall when he tells Matt that everything has healed as well as expected and that his recovery is up to him, now, before slapping his chart closed. Matt refrains from telling the doctor that if he got laid once in a while he could lose the sour-lemon face, but he does mention it to John in the hall. That earns him an amused snort and an appraising look that has him urging John later to drive faster on the freeway. Because, he remembers saying, physical exercise of any kind has got to be good for his knee, right? John just shakes his head… but he presses down on the accelerator.

The physiotherapist tells him to set a goal – a place he’d like to visit on a dream vacation. Imagine walking on sandy shores, she tells him. Then work hard to get there. Matt doesn’t tell her that after paying for the hospitalization and the physio, the closest shore he can afford to get to is Jersey.

John? John just shrugs and says, “It needs to be done, kid. So do it.” And then goes back to his eighty-nine-hundredth rep for his shoulder, and doesn’t even look like he’s breaking a fucking sweat.

Matt tries. He really does. 

He blinks sleepily at the alarm clock and then pulls himself out of bed at some ungodly hour. 

Well, okay. One o’clock. 

He lays flat on his back on the workout mat that John appropriated from the gym at the precinct, and tries not to remember all the horrible phys-ed class experiences that took place on a similar mat. Because high school sucked ass – and not in the good way – and wedgies were definitely not his favourite thing. And he grew to have an intense hatred for the pommel horse and its inherent ball-smashing abilities. Even the plastic-sour smell of the mat makes him flash back to the time Rory Sorenson bounced his head off it (and he thought of that dickless douchebag every time he looked at the resulting scar for months afterward), or the uncomfortable embarrassing wood he popped during the wrestling match with Steve Tomlinson in his senior year. 

Still, he tries. He takes a deep breath. He bends his knee. He pulls his leg toward his chest.

The resulting pain feels like a pair of talon-fingered sprites are digging their spiked claws into his muscle and pulling in opposite directions while simultaneously peppering him with buckshot. He can even picture them, two bitches with fiery red eyes that match their hair and smug self-satisfied grins. (He told this to John once, too, when they were lying breathless and tangled beneath the sheets. John just side-eyed him, said “You’ve got some imagination, Matty” before rolling over and slinging an arm comfortably over his chest, closing his eyes. Matt decided not to mention the wings.)

It’s almost worse than getting shot, because at least that was one giant explosion of agony and then the blessed joy of morphine. After the exercises from hell, he gets to have two Advil. And occasionally he just pukes them up in the toilet. Because hi, pain.

Still. He really does try. He’s trying, in fact, when the front door opens and John calls out, “Hey, kid. You up?”

“Now that you’re home, I am definitely _up_ ,” Matt says, propping himself up on his elbows. He skids forward a little on this ass, pokes his head around the edge of the sofa, and immediately feels his cheeks start to flush when he sees that John’s not alone. “Oh, hey. Lucy. Hi.”

“Wow, lame sexual innuendo. Hot.” She flips her hair over her shoulder, looks to John. “However do you resist him?”

“I can barely keep my pants on,” John answers dryly. He reaches around Lucy to put a bag of groceries on the island – a bag, Matt notes, that he’s carrying in his bad arm. Because eighty-nine-hundred reps and not a fucking sweat. He’s not sure whether to be impressed or annoyed. He can definitely tell that the sprites are flipping him the finger. 

Matt shakes his head when he sees John reaching for the bag in Lucy’s arms, sits up a little straighter. “Oh, I can help—“

“Sit,” John says. “You’re not finished with that.”

Okay, so Matt doesn’t know how John can tell that just from a glance, unless he’s willing to add freakish mind-reading abilities to the list of John’s superhero attributes. Which would be really unfair. Something should be left for the rest of the population. Sure, Matt knows he got the ability to work out complex equations in his head, but compared to John’s super-strength and super-recuperation-speed he thinks he got the short end of the stick, here.

“No,” he tries again, “I can—“

“Stay,” John says.

Matt slumps back on his elbows, ignores the amused look that Lucy’s shooting his way and scowls at the sofa before palming sweat-tinged hair out of his eyes. “I’m not actually a dog,” he mutters. 

He glances up in time to catch Lucy mouthing ‘woof woof’, and reminds himself that sticking his tongue out would just be lowering himself to her level.

She’s still grinning when John pulls her into a hug and thanks her for the lift before walking her to the door. 

“Anytime,” she says. “Except Thursday. I have a date.”

“Oh?”

Lucy’s smile just gets wider. “His name’s Sebastian. He’s a philosophy student. He’s giving a poetry reading at the student union.”

John eyebrow creeps up his forehead, but he manages to force out a “great” and a constipated smile before the door shuts behind her. Matt totally imagines Lucy skipping to her car, and can’t even wipe the smile from his face when John grunts and kneels down beside him. He never met the fabled Jim of He Was Pawing My Little Girl Right In Front Of Me Goddamnit fame, but he bets John thinks wistfully back to that dude and his grabby hands.

“She’s doing this just to spite me,” John says.

“Of course she is.”

“ _Sebastian_? I wouldn’t name a _cat_ Sebastian. And who the fuck writes poetry?”

“Guys named Sebastian? Hey, I bet he wears a fedora.”

“Jeeeeeeeeeesus,” John sighs.

Lucy’s revolving door of inappropriate boyfriends has been an endless source of amusement to Matt since the Coming Out Incident – which really was just Lucy walking in on John sprawled on top of him with his tongue halfway down his throat, John turning seventeen shades of red, and Lucy standing with her hands on her hips screeching, “I knew it!” Then she’d announced in no uncertain terms that if John got to “suddenly go gay and date a _guy_ who’s _my age_ , you can’t say shit about who I see. Hell, John, I can date a _Gruber_ and you can’t say a goddamn word!” John had cursed, but Matt had to admit she had a point. 

Matt’s favourite had been the biker with the grim reaper tattoo on his chest. He’d lasted three whole days before he was suddenly picked up on an outstanding warrant from California. John swore he had nothing to do with it. 

Technically, he probably didn’t. Matt would lay odds that it was Connie who did the research and called in the info.

Matt’s pulled out of his reverie when John’s face looms into his field of vision, all business. “How many reps have you done?”

Matt blinks. “Twenty five,” he says brightly. “Five more to go.”

He holds John’s gaze for as long as he can, finally deflates and huffs out a breath. “Fine,” he concedes. “Twenty.”

When John just continues to stare at him, he throws up a hand. “FINE. Eight. Fuck, McClane, turn off the bright light, stop the water torture. I’ll talk, copper, I’ll talk.”

John just smirks, runs a hand soothingly down his calf. His fingers hesitate over the scars, leftovers from when he had bolts sticking out of his knee and the sprites were held off by liberal doses of vicodin. “Ain’t got a choice. You gotta do it, Matt,” John says.

“I _know_ ,” Matt says. He doesn’t want to sound like a pussy, he really doesn’t, especially when John does his required reps and then some and doesn’t ever bitch about it, but he detects a whining note in his voice despite his efforts. “It’s just really hard.”

“Yup, it is,” John says, reaching out to cup a hand over Matt’s groin. His dick’s already been showing some interest ever since John crouched down over him, but the feel of John’s warm palm through his jeans means that things take a definite upswing. Pun absolutely intended.

“Talk about the lame sexual innuendo,” he says.

John arches a brow. “I would, but I don’t want to get you off _too_ fast,” he says.

Matt clears his throat. “Um. What?”

“I’ve been thinking,” John says.

Matt finds it kind of hard to think himself with that hand just resting lightly on his crotch. Just… there. Even though it’s not actually doing anything at the moment. The potential for it to do something is actually pretty huge. But he manages a smirk, regardless. “Uh oh,” he says. “Alert the media.”

“Knowing it’s up to you doesn’t work. Motivational speeches sure as fuck don’t work. What you need,” John says, “is a reward system.”

The sound of his zipper being slowly pulled down suddenly seems very, very loud in the silence of the room. And his throat is suddenly very, very dry. Matt licks his lips, eyes darting between his own cock straining against his boxers and John’s eyes, dark and intent. “Yeah?” he says.

“Yeah,” John says. 

His lips upturn in that smirk that Matt has come to love just before he leans down to mouth Matt through his boxers. 

Matt hitches in a breath, shudders at the feel of John’s warm breath through the thin material. “I like where you’re going with this,” he manages to croak out. 

John’s still smirking when he lifts his head. “So, you’ve got… what? Twenty two reps to go?”

Matt knows he should be able to do this, he can do advanced code in his head for fuck’s sake, but for the life of him he has no idea if that’s the correct answer. So he just goes with it, nods his head.

“Sounds pretty easy to me,” John says.

His blunt fingers dip into the slit of Matt’s boxers to draw out his cock, already hard and wet and leaking, and when Matt watches it disappear in the long slow slide of John’s fist he thinks it’s probably the hottest thing he’s seen all year. Then John bends down to wrap his lips around the head of his dick and suck lightly and he has to rethink that. And then John pulls off and licks his lips, and Matt has to curl his fingers into the carpet to keep himself from shooting like some fifteen year old on his first date.

“So,” John says. “What do you think?”

“The sprites can suck it,” Matt grunts out as he does the first rep.

John grins wolfishly. “And then I will.”


End file.
